Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

‘I didn’t mean that exactly. Even so, it would still bring her misery. This must just be a beautiful interlude.’

She scowled at him, put out her tongue, reached over to a side table. Grasping a bottle of suntan oil, she began to anoint herself, kneeling up on the bed and shutting him off by her concentration on her body.

‘If that sight doesn’t give me a hard on, I don’t know what will.’

‘Oh, Tom, I wish that bloody UFO I dreamed about had taken me away.’

He swung over and sat on the side of the bed so that he did not have to watch her oiling her breasts.

‘I just remembered when I first thought of the title, “Frankenstein Among the Arts”. Long before I rationalized its use. I thought of all the arts of living, which have perhaps been brought to a higher standard in the West, and to more people, than they have ever been before. And I wondered why the hell we weren’t all happier than mankind has ever been. Not that we deserve to be while parts of the world are starving, as moralists would doubtless remark.’

‘As if you weren’t a stinking moralist!’

‘Ah, but I’m not the old kind who was shocked when people enjoyed themselves; I’m shocked that people don’t enjoy themselves. And that’s what I saw — behind all the benevolent arts of living, a monster looming, blindly clutching and throttling all that comes within its grasp. What I really wanted to do in the series and the book — what I haven’t done, what I even lost sight of doing — was analyse not the nature of the arts but the nature of the monster. How would you label it: Morality, Immorality, maybe, Communism, Capitalism, History, or some deep-rooted biological flaw in human stock?’

‘Things aren’t that bad, darling.’

‘You said it yourself earlier today. Why do dreams always stop just as you’re getting to the good part? Ever since we were in Sarawak I’ve been thinking of that cave wall full of phantom hands, palms outstretched in supplication. They may well prove to be the very earliest artwork of mankind that we know — and there we all are, hands lifted, grasping at — something we can’t get, something we can hardly even adumbrate.’

She put the stopper back on her bottle.

‘Or maybe something we’ve lost, like the Australian and his Istosky Lemosky.’

The sun was glinting through their blinds with slanting rays. He reached over and picked his watch off the bedside table. ‘It’s half-five already. In the Pole’s case it was no doubt the hostile politics of the century that separated him from his place of birth, awful, cold, and unpronounceable as it was, and set him on that long road to Australia and the noonday brandy. But the monster always calls, through one agency or another.’

She trotted round the room and stroked his hair. He placed a cheek against her glistening flank.

‘Stop it. The dice aren’t loaded against us. Don’t pretend they are or they will be. Fatalism is all wrong. Come on, we found each other, didn’t we? That suggests that your monster is on our side, doesn’t it? There’s no monster. You’ve just got one of these intellectual ideas like my father had. I’m going to get you out of it, I’m going to be your Lauren Bacall, Bogie, and I’m going to take care of you and mother you like a daughter, and see that no harm comes to you — ever.’

He grasped her teasingly by one labium.

‘Laura, you’re marvellous. For you I’d swim the Styx, or even the River Bug. Now, drape something over this lascivious little body and let’s see how life is progressing down below.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re very happy to have you aboard with us for this tour of Singapore by Night, of which we are all so proud, remembering that it is the third largest port in the world. There are many exotic sights to see, for this really is the most cosmopolitan city on Earth, not excluding Hong Kong and other ports you might name, and thus perhaps a pointer for other cities in the future.

‘As to the past which is behind us, many many peoples have formed Singapore and still live here now it is an independent republic. That’s why it is such a melting pot of the Orient, with Chinese, Malays, Indians, Sikhs, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Eurasians, Japanese, Australians, and also the British and other Europeans, with all different religions, in the pot happily together. So it is a hospitable place.

‘It’s a great tourist spot, and this year we expect that three million tourists will visit us. All will be welcome, since each tourist spends just about five hundred dollars during an average four days’ stay here. Radios, clothing, cameras, electronic gadgets, these are favourite buys for the traveller, along with girls of course, for which Singapore is famous, although prostitution is not quite so rampant as in the days when our city was part of the British Empire and a port for the navy.

‘Of course it’s not an ideal city, despite what our tourist propaganda says, but maybe there’s no such thing as an ideal city — except existing as an ideal. However, if you don’t mind if I get a bit egg-headed, I want to draw a parallel between Singapore and Venice, because you’ll be able to get a free drink on Four Star Coach Company when we stop at Raffles Hotel in the glamorous heart of the city.

‘Both Venice and Singapore depend on the sea, of course. That much is clear even to the thickest tourist from the USA or wherever. As the Middle Ages closed in Europe, it was the golden city of Venice which stood out above all other cities as supreme in beauty and wealth. In its internal development, it showed the promise of a new urban constellation far remote from the old walled cities which till then had existed since Neolithic times. So it was the city looking to the future.

‘For many years and centuries, Venice was a symbol and legend of city-state success. We think Singapore is the current example of a demographic urban solution. We are peaceful but energetic.

‘Trade was the golden key in Venice. Here in Singapore, it’s the same. But much more so. We depend not only on water but also the air. Two hundred ocean-going vessels float in our harbours each day, and sixty countries send their shipping lines here. At the Paya Lebar airport — and soon we will have a newer bigger one at picturesque Changi — we form a hub for international air routes, and over thirty important airlines operate their services through us. If you are male and your hair is too long when you arrive here, then you must get it cut short, but that’s a minor detail because nobody wants to harbour hippies in our hard-working republic — they can go on to Bali or India, where nobody seems to care if they shit on the beaches.

‘In the future, we will expand also into space if necessary and at all profitable. We can build a spaceport as easily as anyone. There are still a few kampongs we could knock down, or we could take over an unused pleasure island. We have to do all we can, because we have no defences and so no crippling defence budget to be paid for in taxes. So we make an appeal to pacifists the world over, but pacifists won’t come here to live in case they must work too hard.

‘After all, in a hard world, the population of Singapore must work. We’ve got enemies. Indonesia’s a pain at the back of the neck. And all the desperate nations of Indo-China. So here you can work and live comfortably, with dignity. Some of our girls are very beautiful, but sex is an invisible earner and we are realistic. Venice was called The Brothel of Europe in the eighteenth century. We have no danger of a similar label today, not with the Thais about, and Bangkok such a flesh market.

‘You know that this whole island was rather a dump, with just a few indolent Malay fishermen and snakes before Sir Stamford Raffles arrived and stirred things up. Well, Venice was much the same until some Italians from Padua escaped from an invader, crossing lagoons and settling on unpromising swamps and islands in the fifth century AD, So was the canal developed and the gondola, which we hear of by the eleventh century. We have created a city out of similar material, due mainly to the energy of the Chinese. It’s true we have none of the arts which made Venice great, and no painters or even stars like Piranesi or Tiepolo, but international cabaret stars like Sammy Davis Jnr often perform here and all the latest films are shown from all over the world. In fact, we’re suspicious of art, which is often produced by layabouts or religious maniacs, but it’s great f16 country. Our business men are strictly commercial, yet honourable and look after their families well.